Blizzard updates 'World of Warcraft' with native support for Apple Silicon

AppleInsider

Players of "World of Warcraft" will be able to continue gaming on the new M1-equipped Macs, with Blizzard's latest patch adding native support for Apple Silicon.

In a post made to its community forums, Blizzard advised the 9.0.2 patch due this week for "World of Warcraft" will "run natively on ARM64 architecture, rather than emulation via Rosetta."

Rosetta 2 is Apple's translation software to enable programs made for x86 architecture to function properly on the new M1 system-on-chip. Using Rosetta 2 will impact a program's performance, so shifting to native support frees up resources that can be put towards rendering the game at a higher frame rate or quality.

"We're pleased to have native day one support for Apple Silicon," Blizzard adds. The game company also warned that it is "highly aware of the nature of day one support with updates like this" and asks users to report any issues that may be related to Apple Silicon to its Mac technical support forum.

The announcement by Blizzard is encouraging for the gaming industry, as "World of Warcraft" continues to be one of the more important games being played today. The native support may encourage other developers to rework their games to do the same, instead of taking the small performance hit from Rosetta.

Blizzard's announcement follows similar moves by Pixelmator, Adobe, Parallels, and VMWare to support M1.

lkrupp

Reputable developers will support ASi Macs sooner rather than later. This is starting to look like it will be a very successful transition.

22july2013

Hopefully Blizzard ports more of its ~10 Mac games to M1 Mac. And it's probably asking too much, but if the games can run on M1, can they be ported to run on A14 (iPad) which also supports mice/keyboards? It's almost the same CPU as M1. I would point out that iOS now supports mice (one of which is required for most Blizzard desktop games.)

ihatescreennames

Look for native M1 Mac support coming for Fornite soon*!

*not soon

appleish

Hopefully the M1 will pay off for Warcraft. My 16-inch MBP is a good as Intel will ever be for MacOS, and my fans run like crazy even with graphics cranked way down in Warcraft. 

jintech

22july2013 said:

Hopefully Blizzard ports more of its ~10 Mac games to M1 Mac. And it's probably asking too much, but if the games can run on M1, can they be ported to run on A14 (iPad) which also supports mice/keyboards? It's almost the same CPU as M1. I would point out that iOS now supports mice (one of which is required for most Blizzard desktop games.)

I'm sure they (Blizzard) wanted to port their most profitable/popular game first and are working on ports of their other titles as we speak.

22july2013

Does anyone know (a) what percent of World of Warcraft players play on Macs vs Windows? (b) what percent of Mac players own World of Warcraft, or (c) what applications generate more revenue for Mac developers than World of Warcraft?

octomonkey

Bring back PPC support!!!

My G5 is gathering too much dust.

dysamoria

Huh. Good.

Coincidentally, I just spent the afternoon reminding myself why I haven’t finished Broodwar.

I installed Starcraft on my iMac through Battle.net, moved my saves from my old PC, played the same mission over six times, looked up advice on it, found I WAS doing what we are supposed to do... and lost interest again.

Starcraft is the only strategy game I ever enjoyed, but I don’t enjoy challenges anywhere as much as I did a decade ago... and I didn’t enjoy them much then.

Anyway, cool game, but it’s not for me anymore. None of their stuff is. I’m glad they keep their code up-to-date, but that’s mostly down to the fact that video gaming has become “e-sports”, where watching obsessive gamers play is now big business. This is also not for me.

pascalxx

Would be interesting to see World of Warcraft as an early benchmark for the M1 compared to the Intel Macs.

vakoh

Nice job Blizz.   

sunman42

Appleish said:

Hopefully the M1 will pay off for Warcraft. My 16-inch MBP is a good as Intel will ever be for MacOS, and my fans run like crazy even with graphics cranked way down in Warcraft. 

I'd say my i9-powered 27-inch 5K iMac with the 5700XT graphics option is as good as Intel ever got for macOS, but you're welcome to your opinion. For what it's worth, though, the fans on this machine are close to whisper-quiet.

    Here's hoping the successors to the M1 for peppier machines than the M1 models so far announced do even better at graphics-intensive tasks.

    It would be fascinating to learn from Blizzard how much dev time it took to carry out the port.

    And kudos to Blizzard, who just a year or so ago were folding their Mac dev team into the general one and raising fears of dropping all Mac support. Wouldn't it be a kick in the pants for the Windows game industry if it turned out that Macs with onboard graphics turned out to have competitive performance with custom-built x86 game systems?

edited November 2020

fastasleep

dysamoria said:

Huh. Good.

Coincidentally, I just spent the afternoon reminding myself why I haven’t finished Broodwar.

I installed Starcraft on my iMac through Battle.net, moved my saves from my old PC, played the same mission over six times, looked up advice on it, found I WAS doing what we are supposed to do... and lost interest again.

Starcraft is the only strategy game I ever enjoyed, but I don’t enjoy challenges anywhere as much as I did a decade ago... and I didn’t enjoy them much then.

Anyway, cool game, but it’s not for me anymore. None of their stuff is. I’m glad they keep their code up-to-date, but that’s mostly down to the fact that video gaming has become “e-sports”, where watching obsessive gamers play is now big business. This is also not for me.

Surprise, Dysamoria doesn't like it! 

dysamoria

fastasleep said:

dysamoria said:

Huh. Good.

Coincidentally, I just spent the afternoon reminding myself why I haven’t finished Broodwar.

I installed Starcraft on my iMac through Battle.net, moved my saves from my old PC, played the same mission over six times, looked up advice on it, found I WAS doing what we are supposed to do... and lost interest again.

Starcraft is the only strategy game I ever enjoyed, but I don’t enjoy challenges anywhere as much as I did a decade ago... and I didn’t enjoy them much then.

Anyway, cool game, but it’s not for me anymore. None of their stuff is. I’m glad they keep their code up-to-date, but that’s mostly down to the fact that video gaming has become “e-sports”, where watching obsessive gamers play is now big business. This is also not for me.

Surprise, Dysamoria doesn't like it! 

That’s not what I said, but hey, we wouldn’t want subtleties to get in the way of your oversimplification for purposes of making ad hominem attacks. I mean, there’s nothing to argue about here, so... 🤷🏽‍♂️ 

22july2013

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

octomonkey

22july2013 said:

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

If you have a chance, try a similar test on your new M1 Mini with the Intel version of WoW running under Rosetta 2.

irnchriz

22july2013 said:

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

MacBook Air 8GB, running wow (9.0.2) native client.  2560x1600, water high, shadows low, sun shafts off, ssao off, all sliders (view distance etc) at 10.  60fps solid.  Looks great. Runs great especially now as they hotfixed the crashing issue.

detnator

22july2013 said:

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

Good information. The really interesting thing to compare though is how all this compares with the Intel Mac Mini this M1 replaces. 

I’d like to believe that future ASi Macs will each have similar performance improvements over each Intel one they replace - in useful real world tests like these. 

Eg. People complaining that the M1 MBP’s specs suck compared with the higher end Intel 13” MBP or same with the M1 Mac Mini against a fully decked out 6-core 64GB Intel Mac Mini... they don’t get that these M1’s don’t replace those machines and more is coming to replace those instead.  

So how do 22july2013’s tests here compare against the low end Intel Mac Mini that his M1 model replaces? If anyone here has one of those Intel models and can try that it would be good information. 

And it the “like for like” comparison there proves promising, and if it turns out that future ASi Macs that each replace each tier of the rest of the Intel Mac lineup have similar performance gains over those corresponding Intel models then we’re in for some very exciting times indeed, I think. 

As sunman42 suggests above, won’t it be sweet if these new ASi Macs compete well with high end/custom gaming PCs - without even trying! 

22july2013

Detnator said:

22july2013 said:

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

Good information. The really interesting thing to compare though is how all this compares with the Intel Mac Mini this M1 replaces. 

So how do 22july2013’s tests here compare against the low end Intel Mac Mini that his M1 model replaces? If anyone here has one of those Intel models and can try that it would be good information. 

I'm not sure how to test it on my 2020 Intel Mini, because in order to play the game it has to be patched to the latest version, which is now the M1-supported version. 

22july2013

OctoMonkey said:

22july2013 said:

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

If you have a chance, try a similar test on your new M1 Mini with the Intel version of WoW running under Rosetta 2.

The game insists on updating itself before it runs. I don't know how to install an outdated version of WoW. Since M1 support came out for this game on the very first day that we had M1 Macs in our hands, it seems impossible for anyone to test this. An Apple VP once said he had tested the Intel version of WoW running on Rosetta 2, but he had access to M1s before any of us did.

detnator

22july2013 said:

Detnator said:

22july2013 said:

I just installed WoW on my new 16GB Mac Mini M1, and tested a range of FPS rates. I took my test character into a crowded city with about 100 characters to display. At the lowest quality settings and resolution the FPS was capped at 60.0 FPS for the default resolution 1680x1050. When you raise either the quality settings or the resolution, the FPS rate drops. So for example, if you raise the quality to maximum and the resolution to 3360x2100 (which looks to me to be a little under 4K) then the FPS drops to 22. But if you keep either the resolution at a modest size or the quality settings at moderate values while keeping the other value at max, then you get numbers around 40 FPS. I recommend that you tinker with raising and lower the quality and resolution until you find a value that suits you best. If you value high FPS then start with the highest settings and then lower the quality or resolution settings, either one at a time or all at once. In my case, I prefer image quality so I think I'm going to go buy a higher quality monitor than my 20 year old 1080P monitor whose screen is fairly poor.

Some people insist that only 60 FPS is good enough for them. You can get close to that in a variety of settings on M1 Macs, but it won't be using all the highest quality settings. If you want the best of everything, then an M1 Mac isn't your best choice. Maybe the M2 next year will be more to your liking, but maybe not. It's possible that Apple will sell M2 Macs with discrete graphics next year, or maybe Apple will simply catch up to discrete performance with their GPUs instead. My wild guess is that M2 iMac Pro and M2 Mac Pro will support discrete graphics in 2021 or in early 2022.

Good information. The really interesting thing to compare though is how all this compares with the Intel Mac Mini this M1 replaces. 

So how do 22july2013’s tests here compare against the low end Intel Mac Mini that his M1 model replaces? If anyone here has one of those Intel models and can try that it would be good information. 

I'm not sure how to test it on my 2020 Intel Mini, because in order to play the game it has to be patched to the latest version, which is now the M1-supported version. 

Acknowledged you can't test it with Rosetta on your M1 because it insists on updating (to the native M1 binary), but if you open it on your Intel mini and it updates, it'll still be updating to the Intel binary of the latest version for running on the Intel mini, surely?  I mean it's not exclusively an M1 update that now no longer runs on Intel at all surely?